Gerard Collomb

Gerard Collomb (2013)

Gérard Collomb (born June 20, 1947 in Chalon-sur-Saône , Saône-et-Loire department ) is a French politician ( PS , LREM ). He was Mayor of Lyon from 2001 to 2017 and from 2018 to 2020 . From 1999 to 2017 he was a member of the French Senate and from May 2017 to October 2018 he was Minister of the Interior.

Life and political career

Collomb is the son of a cleaning woman and a metalworker and CGT trade unionist. He studied classical languages ​​and literature at the University of Lyon and received the agrégation (license to teach higher schools) in 1970 . He then taught at Lycées in Lyon and Tarare .

In 1968, Collomb joined François Mitterrand's small center-left Convention des institutions républicaines (CIR) . This merged into the Parti socialiste (PS) in 1971 , to which Collomb belonged for the following decades. In the 1970s, the Socialist Party hardly played a role in Lyon, when the left spectrum was dominated by the Communists . Collomb has been a member of the Lyon municipal council since 1977. After Mitterrand was elected President, Collomb was elected to the French National Assembly for the first time in the 1981 parliamentary elections, where he represented a constituency of the Rhône department (in which Lyon is) until 1988 . In the 1980s he belonged to the inner-party current Socialisme et réalité of Prime Minister Pierre Mauroy .

From 1986 Collomb was a member of the national secretariat (board) of the PS. In the parliamentary elections in 1988 he lost his seat to the candidate of the bourgeois UDF . From 1989 he was opposition leader in the city council of Lyon, which was ruled by Mayor Michel Noir at the time . From 1992 to 2017 he was Secretary General of the Fondation Jean-Jaurès , the party-affiliated foundation of the PS. He was a member of the Rhône-Alpes Regional Council from 1992 to 1999 and of the Conseil économique et social from 1994 to 1999 . Collomb was elected District Mayor of Lyon's 9th arrondissement in 1995 . From 1999 to 2017 he was a member of the French Senate as a representative of the Rhône department.

After the resignation of Raymond Barres (UDF), Collomb was elected mayor of Lyon, the third largest city in France, in the 2001 local elections with 48.6% of the vote in the second ballot. During his tenure there was urban redevelopment in Lyon and he introduced the public bicycle rental system Vélo'v . In addition, in 2003 he became chairman of the national congress of the Parti socialiste. From 2005 he was chairman of the committee for decentralized cooperation at United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG), a worldwide association of city and local governments. From 2006 to 2008 he was chairman of the Eurocities association . When he was re-elected as mayor in 2008, he received 53% of the vote in the first ballot. Collomb was re-elected in 2014 as well, but given the strengthening of the National Front and the Greens, he received only 35.75% in the first and 50.6% (with the support of the Greens) in the second ballot. From its founding in 2015 to July 2017, Collomb was also President of the Métropole de Lyon , a regional body of its own that takes on the functions of a department and a municipal association in the greater Lyon area (approx. 1.4 million inhabitants).

Within the PS, Collomb was seen as a pragmatic social democrat and was part of Dominique Strauss-Kahn's wing . Shortly after the founding of the liberal movement En Marche by then Minister of Economics Emmanuel Macron in 2016, Collomb declared his support for it. According to journalist Luc Rosenzweig, Lyon under Collomb - with its connection between social democracy and the corporate world - was already a “laboratory of Macronism” before Macron had even entered the political stage.

After Macron's election as president, he named Collomb Minister of the Interior in Prime Minister Édouard Philippe's government on May 17, 2017 , highlighting him as one of three Ministres d'État ("Ministers of State"). After his appointment as Minister of the Interior, Collomb resigned the mayor's office and other related functions. His party colleague and previous deputy Georges Képénékian replaced him as mayor. In mid-September 2018, he announced in L'Express magazine that after the 2019 European elections , which will take place at the end of May 2019, he would give up his post as Interior Minister and leave the Philippe II cabinet . Accordingly, he wants to be re-elected Mayor of Lyons in the French local elections in 2020. Since this announcement, opposition politicians have criticized that it was problematic that he, as an important minister, was in a sense on the brink of being. Collomb submitted a resignation, which Macron rejected on October 1, 2018. After Collomb had confirmed his resignation the next day, it was accepted by Macron.

Georges Képénékian then renounced the mayor's office in Lyon, so that Collomb could be re-elected mayor on November 5, 2018.

Collomb is the father of five children from three different relationships. He is a football fan of Olympique Lyon . He is also an avowed Freemason and has been a member of the Grand Orient de France since 1989 .

Web links

Commons : Gérard Collomb  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Biography of Gérard Collomb
• Urban Development Lyons

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Jérôme Cordelier, Catherine Lagrange: Sur les traces de Gérard Collomb. In: Le Point , April 3, 2014.
2. ↑ COLLOMB Gérard, Ancien sénateur du Rhône. In: Les anciens Sénateurs - Cinquième République , January 28, 2020.
3. ↑ Summary of Activities of the Working Groups and Commissions and Prospects for 2007-2010. Decentralized Cooperation. United Cities and Local Governments, 2007.
4. ^ History , Eurocities. Retrieved January 28, 2020.
5. ^ Sophie Huet: Municipales 2014: Collomb réélu pour un troisième mandat à Lyon. In: Le Figaro , March 31, 2014.
6. ↑ Marie-Annick Dépagneux A Lyon, Collomb fait le bonheur du monde des affaires. In: Les Echos , March 18, 2011.
7. ↑ Julia Amalia Heyer: "Yes, we Kahn". In: Der Spiegel , March 28, 2011.
8. ^ Nathalie Raulin: Gérard Collomb: "Macron doit se remettre en marche". In: Liberation , August 28, 2016.
9. ↑ Luc Rosenzweig: Lyon, capitale de la Macronie. In: Causeur.fr , March 13, 2017.
10. ↑ Gérard Collomb - Emmanuel Macron also loses his interior minister. In: The time . Zeitverlag , September 18, 2018, accessed on September 19, 2018 . 
11. ↑ Macron now accepts the resignation of his interior minister. In: www.spiegel.de. October 3, 2018, accessed December 30, 2018 . 
12. ^ Morgane Bertrand, Sylvain Courage, Laura Thouny: 10 choses à savoir sur Gérard Collomb, le fidèle de Macron qui entre à l'Intérieur. In: L'Obs , May 17, 2017.

predecessor	Office	successor
Raymond Barre	Mayor of Lyon 2001-2014	Georges Képénékian